Class was key to Tonya’s fall from grace
The ice skating rivalry that inspired I, Tonya reveals the extent of snobbery in the United States, says Ben Macintyre.
In 1994, the figure skater Tonya Harding was accused of taking part in a conspiracy to nobble her rival Nancy Kerrigan by smashing her knee with a club. It was a defining story of the decade and as US correspondent I had a rink-side seat.
The tale that unfolded in the run-up to the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer had everything: beauty, violence, sublime athletic skill and sleazy criminality. It continues to inspire academic studies, plays, books, musicals and now an Oscar-nominated film,
I, Tonya, starring Margot Robbie.
The Tonya Harding story was about sport, crime, farce, tragedy and sparkly outfits. But at its core it was an exposure of the American class system, that structure of social stratification that most Americans like to believe does not exist but which profoundly pervades American culture, the more insidious for being unacknowledged.
Harding and Kerrigan were rivals in a cartoon soap opera about class: Harding was trailer trash and Kerrigan was a hometown beauty queen. Tonya was given her first gun at the age of 5 and lived in eight homes in six grim towns before she was 18. She smoked and skated to heavy metal music. Nancy was brought up by a loving, stable family, the all-American girl with the perfect teeth. She made adverts for Campbell’s soup. In Britain, class distinctions are about birth, accent and education. In America, class is largely defined by money and looks, and the train tracks that run through American culture insist that you live on one side or the other. Both Harding and Kerrigan were working class but only Tonya was on the wrong side of the tracks.
They were villain and victim, a contrast artificially underpinned and reinforced by a particular brand of American snobbery. As Harding put it: “She’s a princess and I’m a pile of crap.”
Born into extreme poverty, an undereducated dropout, Harding was the victim of physical and verbal abuse from her alcoholic, chain-smoking mother. Her husband beat her up. And yet she became, through bloody-minded grit, one of the best female skaters in the world and the first to achieve the notoriously difficult triple axel in competition.
At first Harding was the focus of a heartwarming poor-girl-makes-good story but then “Skategate” broke and overnight she was subjected to a torrent of class prejudice.
Harding’s ex-husband and her bodyguard had hired a hilariously incompetent hitman to disable Kerrigan before the Olympics. He managed only to bruise her leg rather than break it and failed to keep her out of the competition. Kerrigan won silver, while Harding trailed in eighth position.
The extent of Harding’s involvement in the plot has never been fully established but she was immediately found guilty by the American media, not because of what she might have done, but because of her background.
She was dubbed the “little barracuda”, in contrast to the long-limbed Kerrigan, who was described as “a musical box figurine brought to life”. Harding was too short and too muscular, wore too much make-up and swore like a stevedore. While Kerrigan had a hydrotherapist and dietician, Harding ate broccoli and cheese in the local mall. She wore outfits hand-sewn by her mum, in violent purple; Kerrigan skated in virginal white.
America likes to consider itself classless but as the sociologists William Thompson and Joseph Hickey write, in the US “it is impossible to understand people’s behaviour without the concept of social stratification, because class position has a pervasive influence on almost everything... the clothes we wear... the television shows we watch... the colours we paint our homes and the names we give our pets”.
On every level – her wardrobe, voice, demeanour, friends and family - Harding was depicted as representative of a crude and lawless American underclass, and she knew it: “It’s an image that the media has given me as a bad girl, and the only reason they gave me that image is just because of the few things that have gone wrong in my life, and also because I grew up living in a trailer.”
I, Tonya goes a long way towards putting this hardscrabble life in context but to many Harding will always be the anti-heroine, not because of what she may have done, but because of what she represents. She demanded to be judged on her talents but was never allowed to forget where she came from. Even Barack Obama uses her name as a verb, meaning to politically kneecap an opponent. The “Tonya Harding Club” remains a staple of American diners, the white trash sandwich.
Harding pleaded guilty to hindering the prosecution, arguing that she knew about the plot to attack Kerrigan only after it happened. She was given three years’ probation and a $US100,000 fine. The US Figure Skating Association banned her for life for “a clear disregard for fairness, good sportsmanship and ethical behaviour”, a verdict that was largely about her failure to reflect the wholesome, fantasy image of figure skating. A rottweiler in the sport of poodles, Harding was too dangerous and difficult to be left unchained.
Both skaters remain emblems of different American classes. Kerrigan has earned millions from endorsing Disney, wearing Vera Wang and taking part in
Dancing With The Stars. Harding worked as a welder, painter and decorator, and a shop assistant at Sears. There was a brief and undignified career as a professional boxer.
Harding was all set to be a Disney story about overcoming the odds but then slipped, collided with America’s thinly veiled class bias, and crashed through a hole in the American Dream.